


1-15 Onion Trade

by iippo



Series: Steven Universe Renaissance [15]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27589075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iippo/pseuds/iippo
Summary: A toy trade between Steven and Onion escalates to epic proportions.
Series: Steven Universe Renaissance [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796686
Kudos: 3





	1-15 Onion Trade

**Author's Note:**

> An alternate universe. See series page for details.

After a busy morning of doing nothing in her room in the temple, Amethyst had a busy early afternoon doing nothing on the deck of the beach house. She was napping on the deck, resting her feet on the railing.

“Amethyst?” Steven called from inside the house.

“Outside, dude,” Amethyst called back from her comfortable deck chair, not opening her eyes.

Steven stepped out of the house to talk to her. “Have you seen Ranger Guy?” He asked.

Amethyst opened her eyes to glance at Steven.“Excuse me?”

“Ranger Guy, one of my ‘G.U.Y.S.’,” Steven clarified. Amethyst’s expression remained blank. “You know, G.U.Y.S.?” He tried again and waved two toy figurines in his hands.

Amethyst still had no idea what Steven was talking about. He continued explaining.

“G.U.Y.S.! It stands for ‘Guys, Under, Your, Supervision’! There's Ninja Guy, Construction Guy, Cop Guy, Eye Guy, Invisible Guy, Jagged Guy, Cat Guy, Apple Guy, and my main man, Ranger Guy, the best of all the guys, has gone missing. Have you seen him?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Amethyst answered. “Have you looked everywhere?”

Steven glanced in through the window at the inside of the house, which looked like it had been hit by a localised Steven-shaped hurricane. “I have! Could you look in your room?” Steven pleaded.

“Uh, I suppose, though I don’t know how it could have got into the temple,” Amethyst acceded.

Steven looked down at his two G.U.Y.S. figurines and headed down the stairs to the beach.

“Is everything okay, Steven?” Amethyst asked, noticing how sad Steven looked.

“Yeah... I'm fine,” he replied, “just got to break the bad news to my dad.”

\- - -

Steven made his way to It’s A Wash! – the car wash his dad owned. He strolled inside, looking for Greg.

“Dad? Daaaddddd!?” Steven called out, looking around. But he didn’t see what was coming: a sudden jet of water that hit him straight in the face. “Augh! I'm so sorry!” Steven pleaded.

“Yeah, you're sorry,” Greg teased from the other end of the jet of water he was hosing Steven with, “sorry you walked through that door without a hose in your hand!” He crept closer to Steven, continuing to spray him. “Ready for battle! Aaaah!” Greg charged.

“Wait!” Steven yelled as he walked closer and blocked the nozzle of the hose with his hand.

Greg looked at him and turned the water off. “Man, you look sad and wet,” he observed. “What happened to your life, little guy?”

“I... lost something...” Steven stammered, nervous about how Greg would react to the news, “...something precious.” He looked up at his dad, ready for the consequences.

Greg had a mini heart attack. “Your innocence?!” He gasped.

“I lost Ranger Guy,” Steven confessed. Greg stared at him blankly, not understanding. “One of my G.U.Y.S.?” Steven explained. “From our special day at the beach last summer? You bought him for me at the end of the day,” Steven tried to jolt Greg’s memory, but nothing was getting jolted. “He was one of a kind. He had a miscolored hat, how could you not remember?” Steven was astonished.

Greg scratched his head, trying to remember the special day at the beach. “Ahh... Was this the same day we ate that awesome funnel cake?” He asked.

“Uh... Huh?” It was Steven’s turn to be lost and confused. He had no idea about no funnel cake.

“Yeah, man, that funnel cake. Ha, I even kept the plate. Come on!” Greg led Steven to the van to find the plate. As he opened the backdoors, some helium balloons escaped and vanished into the upper atmosphere.

“Cool balloons,” Steven commented as they went past.

Greg didn’t pay attention and instead began rummaging in the van. “Ah, let's see here. Got some cans, napkins, oh, a yo-yo! A book about yo-yo tricks, a sandwich I've been meaning to catch up on...” Steven picked up a nearby marble and flicked it at Greg's butt. “Ow, my butt!” Greg hollered and Steven laughed. He turned to face Steven. “Wait. What's your story again?” He checked.

“I lost my special Ranger Guy, and I'm quite upset over it,” Steven explained.

Greg didn’t catch the right end of the stick, and focused on the lost toy. “Huh, well, here's a bag full of quarters,” he pushed a nearby bag full of coins to Steven. “Now you can get all the G.U.Y.S. you want!”

Steven gasped and whisper-shouted with starry eyes: “Thank you...!”

“What'd you say?” Greg asked.

“THANK YOU!!!!!!” Steven yelled so hard Greg’s hair blew back.

\- - -

Steven made his way to the Funland Arcade. He passed by the games and approached the vending machines; the G.U.Y.S. vending machine, specifically.

“We'll be reunited soon, Ranger Guy,” he said to the Ranger Guy waiting for him inside the machine as he inserted the quarter. “Here we go.” The machine whirled and flashed its lights as it made a random selection and announced:

“Dave Guy!”

“What?!” Steven yelped.

“Lucky!” The machine exclaimed as it dispensed a Dave Guy figurine in a plastic capsule.

“Not lucky!” Steven protested as he grabbed the capsule. “He's, like, the worst G.U.Y.!” But then he felt bad for criticising the G.U.Y. and admitted, “well, maybe he comes with something cool.” He opened the capsule and checked out the prop. “Taxes?” Steven was so disappointed he stopped caring about the G.U.Y.’s feelings, and yelled: “Come on, Dave Guy, is this all you have to offer? A bunch of paperwork? Answer me!”

Feeling deflated after his outburst, Steven put the toy away and said to himself, “thank goodness I have all these quarters.”

He plopped in another quarter. The machine did the same song and dance and announced: “Dave Guy!”

“No!” Steven yelled and inserted another quarter.

“Dave Guy!”

“Stop it!” Steven threw the Dave Guy capsule at the machine.

“Dave Guy!” was the answer after the next quarter too, and the next, and the next, and the next.

“Ranger Guy-y-y...!” Steven whined and fell over exhausted. The pile of Dave Guys was bigger than his head.

“This machine is out of G.U.Y.S. Please try again another time,” the machine announced and went quiet.

Steven laid on the ground in defeat. “It's over.” He had wasted all that money on G.U.Y.S he didn’t want and he would never be able to get a new Ranger Guy, and he would forget all his amazing memories about the amazing day at the beach with his amazing dad.

Steven’s thoughts were interrupted when a snack machine next to the G.U.Y.S. machine started to rumble. Steven got up to look closer and saw Onion crawl out of the machine’s product dispensor door with an illicitly-acquired snack. The little boy was wearing a white shirt and red footed pajama bottoms, with a blue sweater around his neck like a cape. 

“Oh, Onion,” Steven’s confusion about the noise was abated as Onion was known for doing things like crawling inside vending machines. “What are you doing?” Steven asked to make conversation but Onion ignored him and walked away. But as Steven was watching the kid’s back moving away from him, he noticed a familiar toy figurine in Onion’s back pocket.

“He's got a Ranger Guy?!” Steven gasped, and a sense of urgency gripped him. “Onion! Wait up!” Steven hastily gathered up all of his Dave Guys in the now-empty coin bag. “Let's trade!” He called after Onion as he rushed out of the arcade. He looked around. “Which way did he go?”

Steven spotted Onion entering Suitcase Sam's and rushed over to the store. He got up to the display window and peered inside. Onion was at the counter, interacting with the employee.

“Oh, I guess he needs a suitcase? Is he haggling with that guy? He's a tough customer,” Steven monologued as he watched the retail worker give Onion a paper bag. “Looks like they worked something out?” He concluded.

Onion stepped out of the store and Steven realized what the paper bag contained. “Huh? Did he get that guy's lunch?” Steven was very confused. “I wonder how this is gonna play out,” he mused as he continued to follow Onion.

Onion walked to the Beach City pier and sat down on the edge of it, dangling his feet above the water. Steven kept his distance to see what was going to happen.

Onion opened the lunch bag and took out a delicious-looking burger. “Oh hello, good-lookin’,” Steven smiled, happy that Onion was getting a tasty lunch. But then Onion started deconstructing the burger and flinging the different ingredients into the water, and Steven gasped: “What the heck is he doing?! He's not even hungry?! Oh no, not the tomatoes!” He watched on in despair, not understanding what he was seeing or why it was happening.

Steven’s tribulation was interrupted by a loud blaring of a horn. A fishing boat pulled into the pier and a bearded man in a yellow raincoat and a matching sou’wester jumped out to greet Onion. Onion ran up to him, and the man picked the boy up as they chatted affectionately in incomprehensible murmurs.

“Hey, is that... Onion's dad?” Steven wondered. He tried to listen to what they were saying, but couldn’t make it out. “I guess they don't need words,” he mused.

The man set Onion back down on the pier and jumped back into his boat. The boat backed out to sea again as the man waved goodbye to his son.

“Huh? He's leaving so soon?” Steven was very surprised. Onion watched as long as he could see the boat. “Does Onion just... sit around and wait for his dad all day?” Steven wondered and felt bad for the kid, but then the toy in Onion’s back pocket caught his eye and he remembered why he was following Onion around in the first place. “Ranger Guy! Okay, let's do this!”

Steven approached Onion on the pier.

“Hey, Onion, how are ya?” Steven greeted the smaller boy, who shrugged his shoulders in response.

“That's good, that's good. I couldn't help but notice that you're a G.U.Y.S. fan,” Steven continued, leading up to the topic at hand. Onion stared at him blankly.

“You know, G.U.Y.S.? ...The little man in your back pocket?” Steven tried to explain to a completely blank-faced Onion.

At the mention of his pocket, Onion reached back and pulled out the figurine from his pocket. “Yeah, Ranger Guy!” Steven said. “How would you like to trade that boring old Ranger Guy for a brand spankin' new, mint in box, Dave Guy?!” Steven suggested with fake-excitement in his voice and he showed Onion one of the Dave Guys. “Pretty nice, right?”

Onion shook his head and indicated with a hand gesture that Steven needed to offer him more.

“Oh, I see where this is going. You're getting quite the deal here, with TWO Dave Guys!”

But Onion’s response was the same.

“What? You want more? Like, two more?” Steven offered but Onion didn’t change his mind. “Five more? Ten more? Twenty more?” Onion just kept shaking his head and asking for more. “This whole bag? All thirty of these Dave Guys for just one Ranger Guy?” Steven held out the bag and Onion looked in, surprised for a moment, but in the end it was not enough, and he shook his head. “But there aren't anymore. The machine is empty; I bought them all,” Steven explained.

Onion realised that Steven didn’t have anything interesting to offer him and walked off.

Steven stared at him. “Where are you going? Hey! Let's work something out! Ranger Guuuyyyyy!!” He pleaded, but Onion did not stop or look back.

\- - -

Steven returned to the beach house, where Amethyst was still lounging on the deck.

“Ugh, stupid Dave Guy. Got no future, your haircut's gross, you smell bad…” he grumbled as he walked.

Amethyst caught the end of Steven’s sentence and laughed. “You talking about Greg?”

“No, I'm talking about dumb old Dave Guy. I mean just look at him,” he showed Amethyst the toy, “does it look like his life is going anywhere?”

“Aw, cut him a break,” Amethyst replied. “Maybe this is the year he gets his life together. Maybe he'll get a cool internship.”

“Psch, I doubt it,” Steven spat out, “I can't even trade thirty Dave Guys with Onion to get ONE Ranger Guy,” he explained with vitriol.

Amethyst understood there was a problem, and realised that maybe she had the means to help. “So you need more of that little man to get some other little man?” She asked to understand Steven’s problem.

“Yeah, and the machine's sold out of them,” Steven grumbled.

Amethyst pulled out a strange two-pronged wand from her hair.

“What is that?” Steven asked.

“A replicator wand. You can use it to make copies of stuff. You're magic, I'm sure you can figure out how to use it.” Amethyst handed the wand to Steven.

“...Have you been sitting here all day with this in your hair?” He asked, looking from Amethyst to the wand and back.

“Nah, I got up to look for your G.U.Y. in my room but found that instead. Then I replicated a bunch of snacks and stored them in your room,” Amethyst explained. Steven peered inside the house through the window and saw that there were packets of all his favourite snacks everywhere, forming huge, delicious heaps. Then he looked at the wand in his hand and realised there was now a new possibility to acquire Ranger Guy.

“Wow! Thanks Amethyst!” Steven yelled as he ran off to find Onion.

\- - -

Luckily for Steven, Onion was usually easy to find if you just followed the sounds of explosions and screams. And this was the case this time too. Onion had thrown several packets of ketchup onto the Boardwalk and then proceeded to drive over them several times with his moped, which spun out of his control over the slippery surface. Onion let go of the moped and it careened into a wall, exploding into a ball of fire.

Onion took off his helmet and noticed Steven approaching.

“Hey, Onion!” Steven yelled to attract the smaller boy’s attention, confident that this time the trade would work. He pointed one of the replicator wand’s prongs at the Dave Guy in its capsule and then pointed the wand at Onion, shooting the new replicated toy capsule towards Onion. Onion observed the process carefully and watched as the toy bounced on the ground, then fixed his gaze on Steven.

“That makes 31!” Steven announced triumphantly.

Onion shook his head and began to walk towards Steven. “You want more?” Steven asked and replicated another Dave Guy capsule, shooting it in Onion’s general direction. “32?” He shot another. “33?” And another and another and another: “34? 35? 36? 37? 38? 39? 40?!?!” Steven kept shooting replicated Dave Guys towards Onion, counting them out loud with terror creeping into his voice.

Onion simply continued to approach Steven, batting the last Dave Guy capsule out of his way like swatting an annoying little gnat.

“Enough!” Steven yelled. “What is it that you want?!” Onion smiled and pointed at the replicator wand while pulling Ranger Guy out of his back pocket.

“You mean, you want this, for Ranger Guy?” Steven asked, completely bamboozled.

Onion nodded and smiled sweetly. Steven’s hand started to shake nervously when he looked from the wand to Ranger Guy and back. Onion’s interest in the wand had taken Steven by surprise to the extent that he himself began to doubt whether Ranger Guy was worth it – after all he had tried and failed to trick Onion into trading Ranger Guy for the much less cool Dave Guy. What if he was now getting tricked into a poor trade himself? Would Onion do that to him? How badly did he want Ranger Guy? What was Ranger Guy really worth to him?

Steven was so lost in his mental calculations that he didn’t even hear the sirens of the fire trucks coming to put out Onion’s moped explosion.

\- - -

Later that day Steven was playing with his newly-traded Ranger Guy on the beach.

“We are on the scene with Ranger Guy on Beach Patrol,” Steven narrated and looked around the beach with the toy.

"Things are looking just great out here, Steven," He continued, pretending to be Ranger Guy.

“Yup, everything is great…” Steven confirmed to the toy. “Great…” He struggled to come up with anything else and flopped down on the sand.

He looked at the toy and asked it: “Were you always this boring, Ranger Guy?”

"I used to be a doctor," was Ranger Guy’s reply.

“Maybe you're just more fun around other- Umph!” Steven mused but his thought was interrupted when he was hit by a G.U.Y.S. capsule with a Dave Guy in it. “...G.U.Y.S.?” Steven sat up and looked around, trying to see where it came from. “Dave Guy? I thought I saw the last of-” He was interrupted again by being hit in the face with another Dave Guy capsule.

“Hey, what's the big i-” Dave Guys were raining all around him, and a huge wave of them was engulfing the Boardwalk. “-dea...?” He realised what was going on, and yelled in frustration: “Oniiooonnnn...!”

Steven hurried towards the Boardwalk where Amethyst was already in action. Onion was standing on a giant mountain of Dave Guys, replicating a steady stream of them straight up into the air, and as a result toy capsules were raining down and covering everything.

“How did that kid get the replicator? And aren’t these Steven’s little men?” Amethyst was utterly baffled by the situation and unable to progress in the roiling mass of slippery plastic. “Ow!” She yelped as she got hit in the face with a toy.

Steven’s voice came from under the piles: “They're called-” He emerged and hollered “-G.U.Y.S.!”

“Can you please explain this mess?” Amethyst begged, trying to maintain her balance.

“I traded that Replicator for Ranger Guy,” Steven did as asked.

“You were supposed to just replicate more of the other guy!” Amethyst yelled in frustration. The mass of toys underneath her got jostled and she sank waist-deep into the pile. 

“I tried but apparently Onion wanted an infinite amount of Dave Guys!” Steven defended his actions.

Amethyst struggled agains the toy pile. “Wah! How do you move in this stuff?”

“Try and act like a rich duck,” Steven adviced and dove underneath the pile.

“What does that mean?” Amethyst called after him but Steven was already gone.

While Amethyst was trying to figure out what to do, she spotted movement in the toy mass and Greg emerged next to her and gasped: “Oh my gosh, I just wanted some ice cream!”

“Hi, Greg,” Amethyst said.

“What the heck is going on out here?” He asked, trying to cover his head from the raining men.

“Eh, you know, just doing our thing,” Amethyst said with a shrug.

Steven was making his way up the highest Dave Guy pile that Onion was perched atop of.

“Onion! Stop!” Steven hollered. Onion noticed Steven and stopped shooting replicated Dave Guys. “Oh hey thanks!” Steven said as Onion aimed the replicator wand at a nearby car.

“What did you just replicate?” Steven asked in a panic and then dove into the plastic containers when Onion replicated a car right over the spot Steven had been standing.

Greg and Amethyst were wading through the Dave Guys, trying to approach Onion from the other side.

“Well, at least it stopped raining toys…” Greg observed but didn’t notice the shadow growing over them.

Amethyst noticed that they were about to get crushed by a falling car and shoved Greg under the waves of plastic, yelling “Aahhh! Rich duck!” for an explanation before diving under too.

But fortunately it was enough of a distraction that Steven was able to sneak up on Onion – who had returned to replicating Dave Guys – from below the pile. Steven crawled upwards and emerged with a vigorous leap, like a killer whale making a break for its freedom. Onion was taken by surprise and the break in his concentration made him stop replicating toys.

“Onnnn-ioooon!!!” Steven screamed and shoved the smaller boy. He grabbed hold of the replicator wand as they tumbled down the hill of plastic spheres. They both landed flat on their stomachs, both still gripping the handle of the wand.

“Onion, please stop! Let's trade back,” Steven pleaded. “Take Ranger Guy, he's the best. He even has a miscolored ha-” Steven’s words turned into a gasp when he turned the toy over and saw what was written on the soles of the boots of the little man:

S.U.

Steven gasped at the sight of  his  own initials, which he wrote with his own hand and his own marker onto his own Ranger Guy.

“This is MY Ranger Guy!!” Steven screamed, incredulous. “You traded me my own Guy!!” Onion glanced around nervously. Even though he was an agent of chaos, he knew he had crossed a line. “Our trade didn't count!” Steven yelled at him and Onion let go of the wand when Steven yoinked it to himself. He had been bested.

Steven threw the replicator wand down in an attempt to break it, but it just clinked with the mat of plastic spheres. “Well that didn't work,” he observed.

Amethyst emerged from the toy mass, took the wand and snapped it in half. 

“Amethyst!” Steven shouted.

“I'm not cleaning up this mess,” Amethyst explained nonchalantly, as the replicated objects began to disappear, poofing into nothingness.

\- - -

After all the excitement was over, Steven turned to Onion so that they could talk.

“I think I understand why you took my Ranger Guy, Onion,” Steven began. “I bet you get pretty lonely waiting for your dad all day.”

Onion smiled sweetly and nodded.

“You were probably really bored too,” Steven continued and Onion nodded again to confirm. “And 'cause you missed your dad, you took my Ranger Guy, which is a symbol of the relationship I have with my dad,” Steven concluded.

Onion gave him a quizzical sideways glance and shook his head in confusion.

“No, just the first thing?” Steven asked, and again Onion nodded.

“Well, here,” Steven offered Onion the Ranger Guy. “You need him more than I do.”

Onion took the toy and ran off.

Steven turned to go too, and realised Amethyst had been standing nearby watching him and waiting. 

“Let’s go,” Amethyst said and they headed towards the beach house.

“So, all the stuff that got copied turned into nothing?” Steven asked as they were walking.

“Yep,” Amethyst confirmed.

“Rats…” Steven said, thinking about all those snacks Amethyst had replicated earlier.

Greg joined them as they walked.

“That was really cool what you did back there,” he said to Steven.

“Thanks, Dad,” Steven replied with a soft smile.

“But you went through all that trouble for a toy?” Greg asked, still a bit confused what had happened – let alone what about that funnel cake.

“It was more about the memories than the toy,” Steven tried to explain. “Now we have new memories. Horrible, horrible memories.” He added and his smile hardened into a frozen rictus.


End file.
